FCT editor under pressure to retract?

Is Dr Hayes’s decision to retract the
Séralini study an act of scientific censorship at the behest of special
interests?

After the Séralini study on the toxicity of GM NK603
maize and Roundup was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), the
editor of the journal and the journal’s publisher Elsevier came under sustained
attack from critics who demanded that the study be retracted. Many of the
critics had undisclosed conflicts of interest with the GMO industry or
represented regulatory agencies that had previously approved this or other GMOs
as safe.[1]

The arrival of Dr Richard E. Goodman, a former Monsanto
employee, to a newly created editorial position in biotechnology at FCT
occurred after the publication and mere months before the retraction of the
Séralini paper.[2]

Industry connections need to be acknowledged,
particularly in research bearing on something as fundamental as food safety.
Published reviews of studies on controversial products such as tobacco[3]
[4]
and pharmaceutical and medical products[5]
[6]
show that research controlled by industry is
more likely to conclude that tested products are safe.

Recent reviews of the GM food safety literature have
likewise found that research concluding that GM products were safe tended to
come from industry-connected research[7]
and that research conducted by those with either financial or professional
conflicts of interest was associated with outcomes favorable to the GM industry.[8]

Given this climate of corporate control of scientific
outcomes and publishing, Dr Hayes’s retraction of the Séralini study more than
a year after it was published, overriding the judgment of the peer reviewers,
has the appearance of being a capitulation to corporate interests.

Retraction
decision reached through non-transparent process

Normally, once
a study has passed peer-review and been accepted for publication, the authors –
and other scientists seeking to challenge, validate, or expand on the work –
can be confident that the findings will stand unless fraud, error, or
plagiarism come to light.

The case of the
Séralini study is a radical departure from this convention. The decision to
retract the study was reached through a nontransparent post-publication second review. This unprecedented process appears to have
been orchestrated in direct response to challenges raised by a vocal subset of
the scientific community. The second review process involved a panel of unnamed
persons of unknown professional competence and with undisclosed potential
conflicts of interest, who evaluated the study according to undisclosed points
of reference. The process was not only irregular but unprecedented in
scientific publishing.